Articles in English

The Man Who Invented Christmas: Charles Dickens and the writing of A Christmas Carol. Film review by Joanne Laurier (World Socialist Web Site, 8 December 2017). Directed by Bharat Nalluri; screenplay by Susan Coyne, based on the book by Les Standiford.

A writer for new hard times. By Bill Keach (SocialistWorker.org, April 5, 2012)
“Two hundred years after his birth, the British novelist Charles Dickens still has much to tell us about capitalist society.”

Charles Dickens: the making of a great writer. By Andy Ford (Socialism Today, Issue 156, March 2012)
“His legacy has been claimed by many … What they neglect to mention, of course, was his anger, even despair, at the callous indifference of ‘the great and the good’ to the plight of the poor, and official inaction against the abuses he exposed.”

Dickens the radical. By Gareth Jenkins (Socialist Review, February 2012)
“The great Victorian novelist Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago this month. Gareth Jenkins looks back at his life and work.”

The function of Dickens (Weekly Worker, Issue 902, February 23 2012)
“The English literary establishment fully mobilised for the Charles Dickens bicentenary. But, wonders Harley Filben, why is it so in need of heroes?”

Today’s social divide and the Charles Dickens bicentenary. By John Clayton and Paul Bond (World Socialist Web Site, 23 February 2012)
“Celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) reveal the contemporary version of the official hypocrisy generated by acute social divisions that the author spent much of his life pillorying.”

Contradictory Dickens (Red Pepper, February 2012)
“On the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birth, Terry Eagleton looks at the contradictions of the man and his work.”

Dickens: more than Victorian values. By Lindsey German (Counterfire, 24 December 2011)
“The 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth should be marked as something more than an excuse for more costume drama series’ on television and the promotion of Victorian values.”

Who was Charles Dickens? By Robert Gottlieb (The New York Review of Books, Vol.57, No.10, June 10, 2010)
Review article of seven books about Dickens.

Revolution rewritten. By Jack Farmer (International Socialism, Issue 129, Winter 2011). Review of Colin Jones, Josephine McDonagh and Jon Mee (eds), Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities and the French Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
“Charles Dickens was not a writer who liked to sit on the fence. A passionate advocate of reform, his novels rail against all manner of social ills.”

The Pagan winter. By Harley Filben (Weekly Worker, Issue 846, December 16, 2010)
“Charles Dickens and his ‘A Christmas carol’ are routinely represented as a conscience-pricking call for charity at this time of the year. But, argues Harley Filben, there is more to the novel than that.”

Dickens: a twist in the tale. By Anindya Bhattacharyya (Socialist Worker, Issue 1972, 15 October 2005)
“Michael Rosen talks about his new book Dickens: His Work and His World (Candlewick Press, 2005).”

We could all do with some more Charles Dickens. By Gareth Jenkins (Socialist Worker, Issue 1675, 4 December 1999)
“His novels are full of angry protests about the way those at the top of society blamed the poor for their own poverty. The workhouse summed up the way the poor were brutalised.”

Charles Dickens (1939). By George Orwell (The collected essays, journalism and letters of George Orwell, Vol.1, Penguin 1979, p. 454-504; online at George-Orwell.org)
“The truth is that Dickens’s criticism of society is almost exclusively
moral. Hence the utter lack of any constructive suggestion anywhere in
his work.”

Charles Dickens (1912). By Franz Mehring (Marxists Internet Archive)
“One cannot call him, then, a socialist writer. He lacked any speculative plan or inclination along these lines, quite aside from the fact that it was much more difficult then than now to visualize bourgeois society overthrown and reconstructed on new foundations.”

“Many of the industries severely polluted their environments, their machinery maimed and killed many workers, and food in the new factory towns was often of poor quality and in short supply. Even many well-to-do people became concerned over the wretched conditions under which the new working class labored, as is reflected in the popular novels of Charles Dickens.”
Source: Introduction to 19th-Century Socialism